National Child Abuse Prevention Month - The Trauma Children are Exposed to After Their Initial Abuse

⚠️ TRIGGER WARNING - I will be speaking about my own Abuse and Trauma

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month - it goes without saying that this is a very important cause to assign a month to

There is a lot of great information that is being shared during the month. The different types of abuse our children are exposed to. The signs to look out for if a child is being abused. How to teach our children to avoid grooming and abuse. These are all very important themes.

But for many children, the trauma doesn’t stop after the initial abuse. Children aren’t scooped up and taken to a magical fairy land where they heal from their pain. There isn’t a unicorn helping them cope through the subsequent PTSD they will live with the rest of their lives. I want to share my story with you - not of the abuse I endured as a child, but the subsequent abuse I received AFTER my abuser was forced out of my life.

When I was 14, my brother finally spoke up about our father’s abuse and he was forced to leave our home. But I feel as though my abuser always had a say in how I was going to move on from the pain he caused me as a child. From “family therapy” with an incompetent social worker to being forced to describe sexual abuse to a grand jury, the abuse came from members of our community to not being believed by an unprofessional DA.

After 5 years of fighting through the court system and my abuser finally going to prison, he was out in 4 years. FOUR YEARS as opposed to the lifetime I was living with the painful memories of his abuse. He supposedly went through some sort of pedophile “therapy” so that he would not reoffend. But he went on to harm other children. And I felt like a failure because he was able to hurt other kids.

My case was during the late 80s/early 90s but a lot of the same abuse is happening in the system. We need to protect those children who have already suffered through abuse. We need stricter laws and punishment for child sex offenders so that their victims won’t live in fear of retribution or continued abuse. Teaching our children how to avoid abuse is vital, but protecting traumatized children from being re-traumatized over and over is ALSO VITAL.

If you are interested in finding out more about how your state/county or country handles child abuse through the court system, I suggest you look up the laws and consequent punishments for abusers. How do you feel about the amount of jail time a child abuser receives under your jurisdiction? What kind of laws would you want to see in effect if it were your child?

I hope that my story will help other people to understand that our children need protection from abusers but also that those who are supposed to keep children safe AFTER trauma need to DO BETTER.